Challenges with recycling carbon black masterbatches

The growing knowledge in the world about sustainability stimulates the movement in various industries towards a circular economy whereby plastics recycling becomes an essential component. In addition, the manufacturing industry is focusing on producing more environmentally friendly products. However, new ideas also bring new challenges...

Importance of recycling

A circular economy's main objective involves reusing, repairing, and recycling plastic, whereby waste should become the past. The European Union has been working on this since 2006, which has led to an 80% increase in the recycling of plastic. Over that same period, landfill disposal has decreased significantly by 43%.

So, recycling is an important element in promoting a circular economy, but during the recycling process companies face the challenge of making high demands on black and dark plastics. Unfortunately, these dark-coloured plastics are not always recognised by detecting and sorting machines during plastic separation.

Differentiating and sorting plastic types

In particular the challenge lies in the carbon used to darken plastics. A lot of the visible and infrared wavelength range will then be absorbed. For this reason, it has not yet been possible to obtain sufficient signal from black and dark-coloured plastics. This consequently disrupts the ability to sort and reuse plastics.

As a result, black plastic packaging, such as tubes, food bins and jars, ends up in landfills, in the oceans or for energy recovery.

Do you recognize this challenge within your company?

We can imagine that this might be a challenging recycling process for your company. What is your current solution to this challenge or motivators to strive for plastic recycling? Contact our specialist Paul Hendriks for more information.